The God Enki in Sumerian Royal Ideology and Mythology
by Peeter Espak
2010, University of Tartu, PhD dissertation, 284 pp. 2010, University of Tartu, PhD dissertation, 284 pp.
105 views
Seen by: and 30 moreCommunautés, fragmentation territoriale et gouvernement au Proche-Orient arabe (Irak, Syrie, Jordanie et Liban)
Publiée dans la revue Etudes Interculturelles, Chaire UNESCO de l'Université Catholique de Lyon, mai 2012.
Dans le contexte conflictuel du Proche-Orient, marqué par le conflit israélo-arabe et la concurrence des grandes... more Dans le contexte conflictuel du Proche-Orient, marqué par le conflit israélo-arabe et la concurrence des grandes puissances pour les richesses en hydrocarbures du Golfe, la division communautaire est un facteur supplémentaire de conflit. Cela nous renvoie au fait que la communauté est une construction sociale et/ou politique et non pas une donnée fondamentale immuable forcément facteur de violence. Cependant, dans le contexte géopolitique du Proche-Orient contemporain, les fractures sociales recoupent des fractures communautaires, et lorsqu’une communauté s’identifie à un territoire, cela peut provoquer une partition du pays à la faveur d’un conflit. Le processus de mondialisation, qui provoque un affaiblissement des « Etats-nations », fait rejouer les lignes de failles communautaires, d’autant plus que les Etats du Proche-Orient ne sont que des Etats-territoire. Dans ce contexte, la remise en cause de l’autoritarisme, avec le « printemps arabe » de 2011, ouvre une période d’instabilité qui peut se révéler dangereuse pour les minorités dans toute la région. De l’invasion américaine de l’Irak en 2003 à la révolte syrienne de 2011, en passant par la révolution du Cèdre au Liban en 2005, huit années ce sont écoulées durant lesquelles de nettes tendances à la fragmentation interne se sont dessinées.
8 views
Seen by:A Demon from ancient Gozan (North Syria) in the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels
by Eric Gubel
Bulletin des Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire 72 (2000), 43-52
Manchester City victory threatens to strengthen Middle Eastern autocrats
By James M. Dorsey
Manchester City, by winning the Premier League for the first time in more than four... more
By James M. Dorsey
Manchester City, by winning the Premier League for the first time in more than four decades, has defied warnings that money cannot buy soccer success and set an example for Middle Eastern and North African autocrats and wealthy businessmen who employ the beautiful game to strengthen unpopular regimes in what an Egyptian democracy activist describes as the new opium of the people.
The Premier League title crowns the investment of an estimated $1.5 billion that the Abu Dhabi United Group headed by United Arab Emirates royal Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan pumped into the club since it acquired the struggling team in 2008. The investment was used to acquire high profile players, including Argentinian Carlos Tevez, Robinho, Gareth Barry, Roque Santa Cruz, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Touré and Joleon Lescott for a total of approximately $330 million.
Funds were poured into upgrading Manchester City’s facilities: a new office block was built with bars and an entertainment arena for supporters; the Carrington training ground was revamped. The club’s stadium was renamed Etihad Stadium after Abu Dhabi’s premier airline signed a ten-year, $475 million sponsorship agreement with Manchester City.
The Guardian sports writer David Conn notes in a book to be published early next month, ‘Richer Than God: Manchester City, Modern Football And Growing Up,’ that the deprived neighbourhoods surrounding the club ‘s stadium have benefitted little if anything from Sheikh Mansour’s largesse.
Nonetheless, Manchester City fans enthusiastically greeted the Middle East’s first acquisition of a major European club, by wearing Arab headdress and waving British pound notes with the picture of the queen replaced by a Gulf sheikh at the team’s first post-acquisition match. A picture in The Guardian this weekend shows Sheikh Mansour’s portrait featuring on a fake GBP 500 billion note that Manchester City supporters waved at fans of rival club Chelsea.
Fans have at times also been willing to accept cultural changes that have accompanied Arab acquisitions in Europe. FC Malaga’s new owner, law by its new owner, Qatari royal Sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Thani, last year replaced bookmaker William Hill Plc the club’s jersey sponsor because gambling is banned under Islamic. United Nations culture agency UNESCO took the place of the bookmaker.
On the other hand, Real Madrid’s recent decision to remove a Christian cross from its official logo in what it described as the cost of doing business in a globalized world has sparked ire, particularly among anti-Muslim right-wingers. The removal came as Real Madrid embarked on the construction of a $1 billion sport tourist resort in the United Arab Emirates scheduled to open in 2015.
Elsewhere, fans have expressed fears that commercial investment such as new funds that invest in players - Dubai’s United Investment Bank last year launched the Middle East’s first alternative investment soccer fund modelled on similar controversial European funds -- undermines a club’s ability to generate funds of its own and often favours vested interests. Opposition last year by fans of Istanbul’s Besiktas to third party acquisition of three Portuguese players -- Hugo Almeida, Simao Sabrosa and Manuel Fernandez -- was fuelled by unsubstantiated suspicions that the fund involved was a front for club president Yildirim Demiroren, a wealthy businessman who had lent the club just under $100 million.
For Middle Eastern and North African autocrats who have long seen support and control of soccer as a tool to improve their tarnished images, divert attention from widespread grievances and manipulate national emotions the message from Manchester City is that investment in soccer pays political dividends, particularly at a time that the region is wracked by popular unrest. The message is likely to reinforce a tendency to hire and fire managers and coaches depending on how a team performs in its last game rather than in a long-term bid to build a squad’s culture and cohesion. Performance on the pitch is reduced to the prestige of a regime or nation in what to autocratic rulers is a zero sum game.
The message threatens to distort a trend towards professionalization, commercialization and the creation of a proper football industry as a key to unlocking economic opportunity in a world where the soccer pitch is often a battlefield for political, ethnic, religious and gender rights that was sparked by Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup.
For many in the region, last year’s Asia Cup final in Doha, in which half of the competing teams hailed from the Middle East with not one reaching the semi-finals, constituted a wake-up call. It is an experience, Middle Eastern and North African leaders and soccer officials do not want repeated at the Qatar World Cup for political reasons as well as a sense of pride and realization of what soccer can do for their prestige as well as that of their nations.
Manchester City’s victory threatens to send out the message that money rather than political reform, divorcing soccer from the political control of often unpopular regimes and building a strong, cohesive team over time can do the trick.
Similarly, for European clubs there is risk inherent in dependency on wealthy benefactors and in association with Middle Eastern autocrats.
Michel Platini, the head of Europe’s soccer body, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) warned his week in the wake of the Manchester City title win that that clubs dependant on the largesse of wealthy benefactors could face oblivion if they failed to maintain a realistic level of spending.
Mr. Platini defended UEFA’s new Financial Fair Play rules developed in response to an influx of wealthy club owners that require clubs to balance their soccer-related expenditure over a three-year period by telling Fox Soccer America: “We have to protect the clubs, because until they pay Manchester City will be happy but if they (the owners) leave Manchester City what is going to happen with this club?”
Under the new rules, clubs will initially be allowed to make a loss of $60 million over the first three years, falling to $36 million from 2015–16. Mr. Platini reiterated that despite the Manchester City success, money was not a guarantee. Clubs that violate the Financial Fair Play rules could be excluded from European competitions.
The experience of some European clubs illustrates the risk Mr. Platini was highlighting. Emirati Sheikh Sulaiman Al Fahim , barely three months after acquiring Portsmouth FC several years ago, sold the bulk of his stake to Saudi property tycoon Ali Al-Faraj amid reports that his flagship Hydra Village project in Abu Dhabi was floundering. Mr. Al-Faraj too had no intention of staying involved for long. Soon after the takeover, he announced that he was selling the club. But with no buyer on the horizon, Portsmouth FC went into receivership.
Geneva’s Swiss Super League club Servette FC and Austria’s Admira Wacker haven’t fared much better. Servette is on the brink of collapse after Iranian businessman Majid Pishyar who acquired it in 2008, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Mr. Pishyar, who managed the club on a shoe string, tried unsuccessfully to attract government funding by last year appointing Robert Hensler, a former top civil servant for the canton of Geneva, as vice-president. His earlier efforts to salvage Admira, his first European acquisition, failed too. Servette’s problems come on the heels of the bankruptcy in January of Neuchatel’s Super League team Xamax whose Chechen owner was arrested on charges of fraud and financial mismanagement.
Manchester City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak in an interview in
Mr. Conn’s book, an excerpt of which was published in The Guardian this weekend, illustrated the benefits as well as the risks of wealthy ownership. Mr. Al Mubarak expressed surprise at the lack of professional administration that Manchester City’s new owners encountered when they took over the club and described how he had introduced a more professional approach. "One of the big surprises was how amateurish it was. I found it shocking in the famous Premier League, to be without such basic
functions" as a personnel department, he said.
Mr. Al Mubarak appointed former Arsenal winger Brian Marwood as head of administration. Mr. Marwood showed Mr. Conn a 30-page, colour-coded analysis produced by Manchester City's new inter-departmental analytic system for a 15-year-old that was being eyed by the club. For major signings, Mr. Marwood said, the dossiers could run up to 50 pages. Before, he said, "it was in people's heads" Now, it is a spreadsheet that. “that detailed, not left to chance," Mr. Marwood said.
Manchester City is unlikely to be able to comply with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules without Sheikh Mansour. The club’s losses for 2010–11, the year before their finances were assessed under the new regulation, were $294 million, the highest ever by an English football club and five times the total the club is allowed in the coming two years.
In Mr. Conn’s book, Mr. Platini’s concern about an evolving unhealthy relationship between money and soccer seemed lost on Mr. Al Mubarak. “Whichever way I asked Al-Mubarak about the instinctive repulsion many people in football have for this kind of "project" – for a rich man to just buy a club, then pour in as much money as it took to buy success – he did not so much defend what they were doing as fail to understand the question,” Mr. Conn wrote.
“If you said football was not supposed to be about which ‘owner’ had the most money, so who could pay the most to players, thereby seducing them to their club, he (Mr. Al Mubarak) wondered aloud how United had won the Premier League so many times, and how anybody could compete with them without money. If you tried to argue that a club should be a club, belonging to the people who support it, that a sporting competition does not seem sporting if it is owned by one rich man spending whatever it takes to stockpile the necessary mercenary talent, you would be describing an abstract idea with which he was unfamiliar, and which did not match reality as it was, and as it was viewed from Abu Dhabi,” Mr. Conn said.
To Sheikh Masour and Mr. Al Mubarak buying a soccer club may be more fun than the oil and gas industry, the mainstay of Abu Dhabi’s economy, but at the bottom line it remains a business. To them clubs are business. "There is an opportunity we have identified and taken hold of. A mid-tier club will move to become a big club because of the financial resources we are able to make available. Because we see value in making that transition. And that is the bottom line," Mr. Conn quoted Mr. Al Mubarak as saying.
Beyond the financial dependency risk, European acquisition targets also run the risk of being associated with regimes potentially capable of using brute force to suppress popular demands for greater freedom. The UAE has nervously reacted to the mass protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa by cracking down on dissent and freedom of expression at home and investing more than $500 million in the creation of a mercenary force headed by former Blackwater security company head Eric Page for the eventuality of an outbreak of protests at home.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.
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Seen by: and 6 moreWork Notes on Etruscan Mirrors and Murals, Part I
by Mel Copeland
This is a PDF file from our website covering Etruscan Mirrors and Murals, with images compiled from the Etruscan Phrases website http://www.maravot.com/Etruscan_Phrases_a.html.
In contrast to offerings from the British Museum and University of Bologna, where their analyses, following Pallottino, are generally speculation based on guesswork relating to short funerary inscriptions, the Etruscan Phrases work is supported by a strong grammar and vocabulary based on all texts, small and large. Thus, to clear the mystery of the Etruscan language alleged by such esteemed institutions, it is imperative that the Etruscan Phrases GlossaryA.xls be audited. We mention this since the only prospect of clearing up the Etruscan Mystery is through a verifiable audit of the Etruscan Grammar recorded in Etruscan Phrases. The British Museum, University of Bologna and other "Pallottino School" works have not produced a vocabulary or grammar that can be audited, since their theory is that the Etruscan language is unlike any other known to man, not Indo-European. Etruscan Phrases claims that the Etruscan Language is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian, an Indo-European language. It offers a grammar, declension patterns and regular, measurable shifts between Etruscan and these languages; ergo the work can be easily audited.
Most important to the work are the Etruscan mirrors and murals that contain known Classical stories and the names of the principle characters in the stories. The star of the mirrors is Helen of Troy who was the young daughter of King Tyndareüs of Sparta and abducted by the equally beautiful son of King Priam of Troy, thereby causing the Trojan War. While the entire story has captured the hearts and imaginations of generations since that event (Troy was destroyed ~1180 B.C.) we can presume through Etruscan mirrors that the event was part of their history – and they had a somewhat different recollection of it than the Greek version passed down to us.
Because the story is familiar and linking the genesis of Greek heroes and gods, containing their names and actions, we have comparative texts to use in analyzing the Etruscan language, its shifts from Greek and Latin to Etruscan. For instance the heroes of the story follow a regular shift, of dropping vowels and final consonants, etc. Heracles (L. Hercules) is Hercle (almost like the French, Hercule). Helen’s name declines: Helenai and Helenei, leading us to the declension of other nouns. Her father was Zeus who transformed into a swan and raped the goddess Nemesis THALNA (retribution) who had transformed into a goose. She laid an egg or two eggs, one of which was Helen which was found by shepherds near Sparta and taken to Tyndareüs and Leda to bring up. From the egg came Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world.
The most beautiful man at the time was Alexander, spelled ELCHSENTRE and he abducted Helen from her husband Menelaus, MENLE, the brother of King Agamemnon: ACHMEMNVN. His wife Clytemnestra is CLVTHVMVSTHA who murdered her husband in the bath upon returning from the Trojan War, and their son, Orestes (VRSTE) killed her and her lover in revenge. Athena (L. Minerva) is MENRFA; Hera (L. Juno) is VNI, her consort is Zeus (L. Jupiter) Etr. TINIA. Thetis is THETIS and THETHIS, she was a dangerous shape-changer and compelled by the gods to wed her husband Peleus, PELE; they produced the Greek hero of the Trojan War, Achilles who the Etruscans call ACHLE. The mother of Helen, Leda, is LATFA and her brothers, Castor and Polydeukes (Pollux) are CASTVR and PVLTVCEI. Their father Tyndareüs is TVNTLE. Aphrodite (Etr. TVRAN) was a cause of the Trojan War when she was judged by Alexander as “The Fairest” as written on an apple thrown into the wedding of Thetis and Peleus by Eris (Etr. ERIS). Aphrodite’s son was Eros (Etr. ERVS) – appearing in many texts. Another popular figure in Etruscan mirrors is Hermes (L. Mercury) TVRMS.
Apollo (APLV) and Artemis are represented frequently in the texts. Ajax Telemonos EIFAS TELMVNVS committed suicide after Achilles was killed, because he did not deserve Achilles’ armor. Apollo (APLV) and his sister the virgin huntress Artemis (ARTVMES) were highly active in the Trojan War. The Etruscans introduce a new character like Artemis called MEAN who crowns Alexander, awarding him the hand of Helen, though we understand from the Greek version that it was Aphrodite (Etr. TVRAN) that awarded Alexander the hand of Helen in the Judgment of Paris. MEAN appears to be a goddess of the hunt like Artemis from Lydia, recalling the old name of Lydia, Maionia (Μαιονία). This is just a tease, for the mirrors and murals carry amazing details never before known to modern man. The images, names and texts associated with the mirrors and murals set the baseline for understanding Etruscan Grammar and the words recorded in Etruscan Phrases GlossaryA.pdf. (The most current version available at http://www.maravot.com/Etruscan_Phrases_a.html.
We should hope, therefore, that there will be many linguists / scholars who will jump at the chance to clear up the Etruscan Mystery and rewrite the histories so clearly overshadowed by the Pallottino School theories, to help even the museums containing Etruscan artifacts explain a bit more about the items in their displays.
Etruscan GlossaryA.pdf an index to about 2,500 Etruscan words that are similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. Declension patterns follow those in Latin. The 2,500 words equal the repeated words in 6,000 words of the major extant texts. The texts have been frozen in time, covering ~700-400 B.C., representing a lens to understanding the early formation of Indo-European languages, particularly the early Italic-Latin-Celtic languages, such as Italian, French & Romanian / Dacian. (By 45 BC. the language was a dead language - no one understood or could write Etruscan)
This GlossaryA works together with Indo-European Table 1 which refutes theories by the Pallottino school of thought that the Etruscan language is not Indo-European and an isolate, unlike any other language. It is very close to Latin and, curiously, Romanian, Italian and French. The Latin suffix, "us" shifts to "o" as in Italian (Titus vs Tito); first person conjugation patterns are similar to French and Romanian. This GlossaryA provides a quick look at the grammatical structure of the Etruscan language, how closely it coincides with Latin. A more detailed Declension Table can be seen on the Etruscan Phrases website. These PDF documents facilitate independent confirmation of the words in GlossaryA.xls , the Grammar and Declension Table. All words can be examined from actual images of texts on the Etruscan Phrases website. Over 150 texts, with about 6,000 words can be examined at Etruscan Phrases.
The Etruscans surfaced in Italy about 1,000 B.C., reputed to have arrived from Lydia / Phrygia. The Phrygians originated near Macedonia in Thrace, according to Herodotus. One may therefore inquire whether the ancient Thracians (Dacians, Gettae, modern Romanians), spoke a language common to the Phrygians, at the time of the Trojan War and after (~1180 B.C.). The Thracians, Phrygians and Lydians (also dead languages) were allies of the Trojans, according to the Iliad. Etruscan Phrases finds a common vocabulary among Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Etruscan and Phrygian. While French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are considered Romance languages, showing a similar Latin heritage, Etruscan is not, of course, a Romance language, as it preceded Latin, at least in the written form (giving Rome its alphabet).
Resolution of the Etruscan Mystery may be likened to Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B and Jean-François Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone - written in Egyptian hieroglypics, Demotic and Greek. The decipherment of Etruscan is a bit more challenging, since we have no multilingual Rosetta Stone, but we do have enough vocabulary and grammar to establish that Etruscan is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. (Certainly far more vocabulary and a more extensive grammar is provided in Etruscan Phrases than that used by Ventris to claim translation of Linear B as an old form of Greek)
The mirrors with the Devotional Plates may be an easy entry into an audit, for those who are hesitant to examine the larger texts, such as the Zagreb Mummy (Script Z).
Work notes on Etruscan Devotional Plates III
by Mel Copeland
This is a PDF file of our website, 'Translation of Etruscan Devotional Plates III," with images compiled from the Etruscan Phrases website (http://www.maravot.com/Translation_ShortScripts_e.html)
In contrast to offerings from the British Museum and University of Bologna, where their analyses, following Pallottino, are generally speculation based on guesswork relating to short funerary inscriptions, the Etruscan Phrases work is supported by a strong grammar and vocabulary based on all texts, small and large. Thus, to clear the mystery of the Etruscan language alleged by such esteemed institutions, it is imperative that the Etruscan Phrases GlossaryA.xls be audited. We mention this since the only prospect of clearing up the Etruscan Mystery is through a verifiable audit of the Etruscan Grammar recorded in Etruscan Phrases. The British Museum, University of Bologna and other "Pallottino School" works have not produced a vocabulary or grammar that can be audited, since their theory is that the Etruscan language is unlike any other known to man, not Indo-European. Etruscan Phrases claims that the Etruscan Language is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian, an Indo-European language. It offers a grammar, declension patterns and regular, measurable shifts between Etruscan and these languages; ergo the work can be easily audited.
We should hope, therefore, that there will be many linguists / scholars who will jump at the chance to clear up the Etruscan Mystery and rewrite the histories so clearly overshadowed by the Pallottino School theories, to help even the museums containing Etruscan artifacts explain a bit more about the items in their displays.
Etruscan GlossaryA.xls an index to about 2,500 Etruscan words that are similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. Declension patterns follow those in Latin. The 2,500 words equal the repeated words in 6,000 words of the major extant texts. The texts have been frozen in time, covering ~700-400 B.C., representing a lens to understanding the early formation of Indo-European languages, particularly the early Italic-Latin-Celtic languages, such as Italian, French & Romanian / Dacian. (By 45 BC. the language was a dead language - no one understood or could write Etruscan)
This GlossaryA works together with Indo-European Table 1 which refutes theories by the Pallottino school of thought that the Etruscan language is not Indo-European and an isolate, unlike any other language. It is very close to Latin and, curiously, Romanian, Italian and French. The Latin suffix, "us" shifts to "o" as in Italian (Titus vs Tito); first person conjugation patterns are similar to French and Romanian. This GlossaryA provides a quick look at the grammatical structure of the Etruscan language, how closely it coincides with Latin. A more detailed Declension Table can be seen on the Etruscan Phrases website. These PDF documents facilitate independent confirmation of the words in GlossaryA.xls , the Grammar and Declension Table. All words can be examined from actual images of texts on the Etruscan Phrases website. Over 150 texts, with about 6,000 words can be examined at Etruscan Phrases.
The Etruscans surfaced in Italy about 1,000 B.C., reputed to have arrived from Lydia / Phrygia. The Phrygians originated near Macedonia in Thrace, according to Herodotus. One may therefore inquire whether the ancient Thracians (Dacians, Gettae, modern Romanians), spoke a language common to the Phrygians, at the time of the Trojan War and after (~1180 B.C.). The Thracians, Phrygians and Lydians (also dead languages) were allies of the Trojans, according to the Iliad. Etruscan Phrases finds a common vocabulary among Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Etruscan and Phrygian. While French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are considered Romance languages, showing a similar Latin heritage, Etruscan is not, of course, a Romance language, as it preceded Latin, at least in the written form (giving Rome its alphabet).
Resolution of the Etruscan Mystery may be likened to Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B and Jean-François Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone - written in Egyptian hieroglypics, Demotic and Greek. The decipherment of Etruscan is a bit more challenging, since we have no multilingual Rosetta Stone, but we do have enough vocabulary and grammar to establish that Etruscan is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. (Certainly far more vocabulary and a more extensive grammar is provided in Etruscan Phrases than that used by Ventris to claim translation of Linear B as an old form of Greek)
The Devotional Plates may be an easy entry into an audit, for those who are hesitant to examine the larger texts, such as the Zagreb Mummy (Script Z).
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Seen by: and 24 moreWork notes on the Lemnos Stele
by Mel Copeland
The Lemnos Stele was found on the island of Lemnos, containing a writing style that is similar to the Etruscan texts found in Italy. It differs somewhat in the use of the punctuation marks. Etruscan texts tend to separate words and phrases using a dot or a colon. This text, like Phrygian texts on the mainland adjacent to Lemnos, uses two-dot and three-dot colons. Also, like the Phrygian texts (See our Phrygian.html) it uses the omega “o” rather than the “V” = “O.”
Lemnos is an island in the northern Aegean Sea. When Hephaestus was thrown out of heaven, he fell on Lemnos, where the Sintians (an ancient people of whom nothing else is known) cared for him. One version of the story says his mother Hera was disgusted at him, because he was lame, and threw him out of heaven, where he landed in the sea and was saved by Thetis. Another story says Zeus threw him out of heaven, to land on Lemnos, because he had come to the rescue of Hera who at the time was being punished by Zeus. He was later reinstated on Mount Olympus, but never forgot Lemnos, which became his chief cult center. Hephaestus was a blacksmith and became the master artisan of the gods. Among his chief works were the armor of Achilles (son of Thetis) and the creation of Pandora. In the Iliad Hephaestus was pitted against the river god Scamander, which he temporarily dried up in order to save Achilles from drowning.
The Lemnians also claimed close connections with Dionysus, saying that he brought Ariadne there after their marriage. One of the four sons that she bore him was Thoas, who became king of the island. During his reign a series of events initiated by Aphrodite led the Lemnian women to kill all the males on the island. (Aphrodite was married to Hephaistus.) Only Thoas escaped, thanks to his daughter’s loyalty. Realizing that a life without men did not promise well for the island’s future, the women welcomed Jason and the Argonauts when they stopped at Lemnos on their outward voyage. Among the new generation that resulted from this timely visit was Euneüs, who was king at the time of the Trojan War.
During much of that war Philoctetes remained stranded alone in a cave on Lemnos, but the assumption in this myth that the island was unpeopled at the time is not supported by the other myths. Lemnos, together with several other islands of the northern Aegean, was a center of the obscure but important cult of the Cabeiri. The Cabeiri are believed to have originated on the mainland in Phrygia and were prominently worshiped on Samothrace, Lemnos and Imbros — and also had a cult in Thebes. They were honored in the Samothracian mysteries, which were second in importance only to the Eleusinian mysteries. It is generally believed that the Cabeiri were originally fertility-spirits who had a reputation for bringing safety and good fortune, as well as good crops. They were attendants of the “Great Gods” variously believed to be Demeter or Rhea, Hermes and other Olympian divinities.
This translation, “Work Notes on the Lemnos Stele,” follows other “Etruscan Phrases” Work Notes posted in Academia.edu and linked on http://www.maravot.com/Etruscan_Phrases_a.html.
All of the Work notes are based on Etruscan GlossaryA.xls/pdf and our Indo-European Table. Etruscan GlossaryA.xls/pdf. is an index to about 2,500 Etruscan words that are similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. Declension patterns follow those in Latin. The 2,500 words = the repeated words in 6,000 words of the major extant texts. The texts have been frozen in time, covering ~700-400 B.C., representing a lens to understanding the early formation of Indo-European languages, particularly the early Italic-Latin-Celtic languages, such as Italian, French & Romanian / Dacian. (By 45 BC. the language was a dead language - no one understood or could write Etruscan)
This GlossaryA works together with Indo-European Table 1 which refutes theories by the Pallottino school of thought that the Etruscan language is not Indo-European and an isolate, unlike any other language. It is very close to Latin and, curiously, Romanian, Italian and French. The Latin suffix, "us" shifts to "o" as in Italian (Titus vs Tito); first person conjugation patterns are similar to French and Romanian. This GlossaryA provides a quick look at the grammatical structure of the Etruscan language, how closely it coincides with Latin. A more detailed Declension Table can be seen on the Etruscan Phrases website. These PDF documents facilitate independent confirmation of the words in GlossaryA.xls , the Grammar and Declension Table. All words can be examined from actual images of texts on the Etruscan Phrases website. Over 150 texts, with about 6,000 words can be examined at Etruscan Phrases.
The Etruscans surfaced in Italy about 1,000 B.C., reputed to have arrived from Lydia / Phrygia. The Phrygians originated near Macedonia in Thrace, according to Herodotus. One may therefore inquire whether the ancient Thracians (Dacians, Gettae, modern Romanians), spoke a language common to the Phrygians, at the time of the Trojan War and after (~1180 B.C.). The Thracians, Phrygians and Lydians (also dead languages) were allies of the Trojans, according to the Iliad. Etruscan Phrases finds a common vocabulary among Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Etruscan and Phrygian. While French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are considered Romance languages, showing a similar Latin heritage, Etruscan is not, of course, a Romance language, as it preceded Latin, at least in the written form (giving Rome its alphabet).
Resolution of the Etruscan Mystery may be likened to Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B and Jean-François Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone - written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek. The decipherment of Etruscan is a bit more challenging; since we have no multilingual Rosetta stone, but we do have enough vocabulary and grammar to establish that Etruscan is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. (Certainly far more vocabulary and a more extensive grammar are provided in Etruscan Phrases than that used by Ventris to claim translation of Linear B as an old form of Greek.)
We look forward to the time when a peer review of these Work Notes will warrant corrections to the prevailing record, showing that the Etruscan language was similar to Latin and decry the theory that the "Etruscan language is unlike any other and not an Indo-European language." The theory of a non-Indo-European Etruscan language is absolutely false.
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Seen by: and 59 moreWork Notes on the Tavola Eugubine Tablet 1a, Script N462-N748
by Mel Copeland
The Tavola Eugubine is a series of bronze tablets found near the city of Gubbio. There are seven tablets, some of which are written on both sides. The tablets are said to be written in the Umbrian language and in Latin. The texts of the group tend to follow a common theme, that of an oration. This text is a highly repetitive, hierophantic oration dealing with a funeral and perhaps a secret Bacchanalian rite. The archeological context of the tables is of interest, whether the seven bronze tablets were found in situ as one collection. This text appears to be an eulogy to Lord Tito.
This is an update of our work on the Tavola Eugubine, tables 1a, IIB , III and IV (http://www.maravot.com/Translation_EugubineQ.html et al.). Changes produced on this page will be added to our Etruscan GlossaryA.pdf. All of the words in the glossary follow a grammar similar to Latin. One can easily discover that the several hundred texts on Etruscan Phrases all share a common language and grammar. This controverts the prevailing theory that the Etruscan language is not an Indo-European language. It also warrants further examination of the prevailing conclusion that the Tavola Eugubine is written in the Umbrian language.
Etruscan GlossaryA.xls/pdf. is an index to about 2,300 Etruscan words that are similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. Declension patterns follow those in Latin. The 2,500 words = the repeated words in 6,000 words of the major extant texts. The texts have been frozen in time, covering ~700-400 B.C., representing a lens to understanding the early formation of Indo-European languages, particularly the early Italic-Latin-Celtic languages, such as Italian, French & Romanian / Dacian. (By 45 BC. the language was a dead language - no one understood or could write Etruscan.)
This GlossaryA works together with Indo-European Table 1 which refutes theories by the Pallottino school of thought that the Etruscan language is not Indo-European and an isolate, unlike any other language. It is very close to Latin and, curiously, Romanian, Italian and French. The Latin suffix, "us" shifts to "o" as in Italian (Titus vs Tito); first person conjugation patterns are similar to French and Romanian. This GlossaryA provides a quick look at the grammatical structure of the Etruscan language, how closely it coincides with Latin. A more detailed Declension Table can be seen on the Etruscan Phrases website. These PDF documents facilitate independent confirmation of the words in GlossaryA.xls , the Grammar and Declension Table. All words can be examined from actual images of texts on the Etruscan Phrases website. Over 150 texts, with about 6,000 words can be examined at Etruscan Phrases.
The Etruscans surfaced in Italy about 1,000 B.C., reputed to have arrived from Lydia / Phrygia. The Phrygians originated near Macedonia in Thrace, according to Herodotus. One may therefore inquire whether the ancient Thracians (Dacians, Gettae, modern Romanians), spoke a language common to the Phrygians, at the time of the Trojan War and after (~1180 B.C.). The Thracians, Phrygians and Lydians (also dead languages) were allies of the Trojans, according to the Iliad. Etruscan Phrases finds a common vocabulary among Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Etruscan and Phrygian. While French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are considered Romance languages, showing a similar Latin heritage, Etruscan is not, of course, a Romance language, as it preceded Latin, at least in the written form (giving Rome its alphabet).
Resolution of the Etruscan Mystery may be likened to Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B and Jean-François Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone - written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek.
The decipherment of Etruscan is a bit more challenging; since we have no multilingual Rosetta stone, but we do have enough vocabulary and grammar to establish that Etruscan is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. (Certainly far more vocabulary and a more extensive grammar are provided in Etruscan Phrases than that used by Ventris to claim translation of Linear B as an old form of Greek.)
We look forward to the time when a peer review of these Work Notes will warrant corrections to the prevailing record, showing that the Etruscan language was similar to Latin and decry the theory that the "Etruscan language is unlike any other and not an Indo-European language." The theory of a non-Indo-European Etruscan language is absolutely false.
There is a far richer record to be written of an Indo-European branch, dead as of ~400 B.C., that can shed light on the movements of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age Italic peoples, perhaps out of southeastern Europe to Anatolia and then to Italy by sea. Herodotus, who recorded the Etruscan tradition, that they came from Lydia as a result of a long drought after the Trojan War, may be right. We mention this because there is more to be gained in sorting out the grammar at Etruscan Phrases - and possible confirmation of Herodotus - than can ever be hoped for in the bogus theory that "the Etruscan language is unlike any other language known to man." Wikipedia et al. should be corrected.
This text may be of interest to those interested how the liturgy of an Augur may compare to that of a modern liturgy.
19 views
Seen by: and 2 moreDie Erfindung der Ehre. Die Exotisierung und Archaisierung von Ehrvorstellungen in der europäischen Beduinenromantik des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts
In: Sylvia Kesper-Biermann/ Ulrike Ludwig/ Alexandra Ortmann (Hrsg.), Ehre und Recht: Ehrkonzepte, Ehrverletzungen und Ehrverteidigungen vom späten Mittelalter bis zur Moderne, Magdeburg 2011, S. 59-74.
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Seen by:Work Notes on the Tavola Eugubine, Tavola IV, Script Q543-Q915
by Mel Copeland
The Tavola Eugubine is a series of bronze tablets found near the city of Gubbio. There are seven tablets, some of which are written on both sides. The tablets are said to be written in the Umbrian language and in Latin. There are seven tablets, some of which are written on both sides. The tablets are said to be written in the Umbrian language and in Latin. The texts of the group tend to follow a common theme, that of an oration. This text is a highly repetitive, hierophantic oration dealing with a funeral and perhaps a secret Bacchanalian rite. The archeological context of the tables is of interest, whether the seven bronze tablets were found in situ as one collection. This text is probably by that of an augur (haruspex) who is sacrificing sheep at a funeral, referring to Bacchus in the end of the text. The Bacchanalian rite was highly secret, held usually at night, and attended with the noise of revelry and the clashing of cymbals.
This is an update of our work on the Tavola Eugubine, IIB , III and IV (http://www.maravot.com/Translation_EugubineQ.html). Changes produced on this page will be added to our Etruscan GlossaryA.pdf. All of the words in the glossary follow a grammar similar to Latin. One can easily discover that the several hundred texts on Etruscan Phrases all share a common language and grammar. This controverts the prevailing theory that the Etruscan language is not an Indo-European language. It also warrants further examination of the prevailing conclusion that the Tavola Eugubine is written in the Umbrian language.
Etruscan GlossaryA.xls/pdf. is an index to about 2,300 Etruscan words that are similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. Declension patterns follow those in Latin. The 2,500 words = the repeated words in 6,000 words of the major extant texts. The texts have been frozen in time, covering ~700-400 B.C., representing a lens to understanding the early formation of Indo-European languages, particularly the early Italic-Latin-Celtic languages, such as Italian, French & Romanian / Dacian. (By 45 BC. the language was a dead language - no one understood or could write Etruscan.)
This GlossaryA works together with Indo-European Table 1 which refutes theories by the Pallottino school of thought that the Etruscan language is not Indo-European and an isolate, unlike any other language. It is very close to Latin and, curiously, Romanian, Italian and French. The Latin suffix, "us" shifts to "o" as in Italian (Titus vs Tito); first person conjugation patterns are similar to French and Romanian. This GlossaryA provides a quick look at the grammatical structure of the Etruscan language, how closely it coincides with Latin. A more detailed Declension Table can be seen on the Etruscan Phrases website. These PDF documents facilitate independent confirmation of the words in GlossaryA.xls , the Grammar and Declension Table. All words can be examined from actual images of texts on the Etruscan Phrases website. Over 150 texts, with about 6,000 words can be examined at Etruscan Phrases.
The Etruscans surfaced in Italy about 1,000 B.C., reputed to have arrived from Lydia / Phrygia. The Phrygians originated near Macedonia in Thrace, according to Herodotus. One may therefore inquire whether the ancient Thracians (Dacians, Gettae, modern Romanians), spoke a language common to the Phrygians, at the time of the Trojan War and after (~1180 B.C.). The Thracians, Phrygians and Lydians (also dead languages) were allies of the Trojans, according to the Iliad. Etruscan Phrases finds a common vocabulary among Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Etruscan and Phrygian. While French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are considered Romance languages, showing a similar Latin heritage, Etruscan is not, of course, a Romance language, as it preceded Latin, at least in the written form (giving Rome its alphabet).
Resolution of the Etruscan Mystery may be likened to Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B and Jean-François Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone - written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek.
The decipherment of Etruscan is a bit more challenging; since we have no multilingual Rosetta stone, but we do have enough vocabulary and grammar to establish that Etruscan is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. (Certainly far more vocabulary and a more extensive grammar are provided in Etruscan Phrases than that used by Ventris to claim translation of Linear B as an old form of Greek.)
We look forward to the time when a peer review of these Work Notes will warrant corrections to the prevailing record, showing that the Etruscan language was similar to Latin and decry the theory that the "Etruscan language is unlike any other and not an Indo-European language." The theory of a non-Indo-European Etruscan language is absolutely false.
There is a far richer record to be written of an Indo-European branch, dead as of ~400 B.C., that can shed light on the movements of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age Italic peoples, perhaps out of southeastern Europe to Anatolia and then to Italy by sea. Herodotus, who recorded the Etruscan tradition, that they came from Lydia as a result of a long drought after the Trojan War, may be right. We mention this because there is more to be gained in sorting out the grammar at Etruscan Phrases - and possible confirmation of Herodotus - than can ever be hoped for in the bogus theory that "the Etruscan language is unlike any other language known to man." Wikipedia et al. should be corrected.
This text may be of interest to those interested how the liturgy of a Bacchanalian priest may compare to that of a modern liturgy.
41 views
Seen by: and 9 moreCollaboration with Mubarak costs Vodafone soccer sponsorship and fans
By James M. Dorsey
Little did Vodafone’s Egypt unit know what it was bargaining for when it inked a... more
By James M. Dorsey
Little did Vodafone’s Egypt unit know what it was bargaining for when it inked a three-year $9 million sponsorship deal with Al Ahly SC, Egypt and Africa’s most crowned soccer club, whose militant supporters were in the forefront of the popular uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak and have since spearheaded opposition to his military successors.
What was designed as a marketing and public relations ploy to exploit the telecommunications provider’s association with an institution that evokes deep-seated emotions has instead landed Vodafone in hot water with Egyptian soccer fans as well as the European parliament. Adding insult to injury, Vodafone Egypt lost its chance to buy back some of its evaporated goodwill among soccer fans when it was outbid at the end of its sponsorship contract in late 2011 by the United Arab Emirates telecommunications company Etisalat.
Vodafone’s experience has become a case study as telecom operators in the Middle East and North Africa brace themselves for an extended period of political volatility in a region stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf that is being swept by popular protests.
The protests have put management of the risk of political interference at the top of their agenda and could call into question concessions that Blackberry made in 2009 when it bowed to pressure initially from the UAE and Saudi Arabia to surrender the codes for its secure instant messenger. Vodafone’s major risk concern was prior to the anti-Mubarak protests ensuring the safety of its personnel in the case of a calamity or political upheaval.
Vodafone’s problems started when it agreed early last year at the peak of the protests that ousted Mr. Mubarak to first suspend services alongside all other providers, and then in contrast to others to broadcast pro-government text messages that included an announcement of the time and place of a demonstration by supporters of the embattled Egyptian leader. The demonstration took place on a day on which 20 people were killed in clashes with anti-government demonstrators on Cairo’s Tahrir Square where militant, highly politicized, street-battle hardened supporters of Al Ahly and its rival Al Zamalek SC manned the protesters’ front line.
Vodafone, in which state-owned Telecom Egypt (ETEL), the country’s fixed line monopoly, has a 45 per cent stake, is feeling the impact of its collaboration with the Mubarak regime in its bottom line. “There’s still a very strong feeling of resentment and people still don’t like the role Vodafone played,” Amr Gharbeia, an activist at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, told Bloomberg News. Mr.. Gharbeia added that Egyptians have yet to see “practical measures and reforms that guarantee this is fixed,” meaning legal safeguards against politically motivated government control.
“Cutting the phones and internet meant that protesters who were being shot at could not call others and warn them about the snipers and their locations,” said a soccer fan who was at the time on Tahrir Square.
Protests forced Vodafone last year to withdraw a three-minute commercial, part of an advertisement campaign with the slogan Our Power, that sought to whitewash the company’s assistance to the Mubarak regime. The commercial featured images from protest rallies on Tahrir Square, asserting that Vodafone “didn't send people to the streets, we didn't start the revolution … We only reminded Egyptians how powerful they are." It include screen shots of Facebook and Twitter messages posted by
Egyptians supporting Vodafone followed by an audio recording of Mr. Mubarak's resignation.
Vodafone’s acquisition of new clients has slowed in the last year to a trickle compared to the period prior to the anti-government protests. While Vodafone has seen its revenues initially go flat and since decline, France Telecom, one of its main competitors is expanding its business despite political volatility and Egypt’s economic problems. The French company agreed last month to acquire billionaire Naguib Sawiri’s stake in its Egyptian wireless operations for $2 billion.
Vodafone’s woes don’t stop at Egypt’s borders. The European Parliament in a bid to ensure that European telecommunications providers are shielded from political pressures is preparing to issue a report that calls for greater scrutiny of telecommunication companies. Operators “must learn the lessons from past mistakes, such as Vodafone’s decision to give in to demands from the Egyptian authorities in the last weeks of the Mubarak regime to suspend services, to disseminate pro-government propaganda,” Bloomberg quoted the draft report as saying.
Popular resentment against Vodafone and the loss of its soccer sponsorship deal has prompted the company to pre-empt the European parliament’s advice. Vodafone has launched a lobbying campaign to persuade Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliament to adopt legislation that would curb state control and protect its investments. Vodafone is urging TeliaSonera AB and Nokia Siemens Networks to support its campaign. The company is pushing parliament to restrict control of telecommunications networks to the president and to ensure that only he has the authority to interfere and only on the basis of a Cabinet decision.
The proposal is designed to prevent a repeat of last year’s situation in which Vodafone was ordered in a telephone call from the security services to cooperate with the government. Vodafone was told it could expect a visit from security if it failed to comply.
“We’re lobbying very hard,” said Vodafone Egypt CEO Dowidar in a Bloomberg interview. He said that “no one in Egypt, not the previous regime, not the revolutionaries, not us, was prepared for what was happening” when the anti-Mubarak protests erupted.
Demonstrators camped out on Tahrir Square for 18 days in January and February of last until Mr. Mubarak had no choice but to resign after 30 years in office.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Da Urkeš ad Emar. Nota sull’abi
Published in P. Negri Scafa, S. Viaggio (eds), Dallo Stirone al Tigri, dal Tevere all'Eufrate. Studi in onore di Claudio Saporetti, Rome 2009, pp. 283-293
Soccer fan attack on Palestinians sparks Israeli debate
By James M. Dorsey
An initially under-reported attack by militant supporters of controversial Beitar... more
By James M. Dorsey
An initially under-reported attack by militant supporters of controversial Beitar Jerusalem Football Club known for their anti-Palestinian, anti-Ashkenazi Jewish attitudes on Palestinian shoppers and workers in a Jerusalem shopping mall and the Israeli police’s failure to intervene and arrest any the attackers has outraged many Israelis and is raising questions about the moral fiber of a society that tolerates such incidents as well as a soccer club that is unashamedly racist.
Police launched an investigation into the incident that was caught on security camera video only after the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the assault and asked how Israel would have reacted if France had responded similarly to last week’s attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in which four people, including three children, were killed. The alleged killer died in a shootout with police after an intense manhunt and a more than 30-hour siege.
“Those who fail to raise their voice now over Malha will get Toulouse in Jerusalem. Sticks today, guns tomorrow,” warned Haaretz commentator Gideon Levy.
“It's not hard to imagine what would have happened had hundreds of people burst into a mall in Toulouse and beat up Jews who worked there. Israel and the Jewish community would have set up a hue and cry. The president of the republic would have rushed to Toulouse, met with representatives of the Jewish community and expressed his shock and regret. Our prime minister and foreign minister would have competed with each other in expressing shock, and columnists would be fulminating about anti-Semitism raising its ugly head in Europe. Everyone would agree: Jews were beat up (again) simply for being Jewish.
It's also not hard to imagine what would have happened had hundreds of Arabs stormed the Jerusalem mall, beating up Jewish workers. Dozens of rioters would have been arrested and tried. But when it comes to Beitar fans, all is forgiven, all is overlooked. No one was arrested, almost no one said anything, and even after it was made public the mall's manager was the only one to apologize to the workers, who were beaten up simply for being Arab,” Mr. Levy said.
Journalist Uzi Dann noted in a separate commentary that when Paris Saint-Germain fans attacked Jews in 2006 after their team lost to Hapoel Tel Aviv French police intervened immediately and shot one of the attackers.
“In properly run countries like England and Germany there is surveillance of hooligans, who are quite often extreme right-wingers, and harsh penalties are meted out for violence, including imprisonment. And of course, there is massive police presence during games,” Mr. Dann wrote.
He said the mounting Beitar violence stemmed from the growing influence among the clubs fans of a group known as La Familia that is dominated by supporters of Kach, the outlawed violent and racist party that was headed by assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane. Beitar’s management has so far failed to stymie the group’s influence.
Messrs Levy and Dann’s comments followed Haaretz’s breaking of the story that some 300 Beitar Jerusalem fans had attacked Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Malha shopping mall as part of a celebration of their team’s defeat of rival Bnei Yehuda.
The attack, one of the worst Israeli-Palestinian clashes in Jerusalem in recent years, came two years after the Israel Football Association replaced police in Israeli stadium with ushers in a bid to reduce potential provocations of soccer violence. The shifting of responsibility for law and order away from the stadiums did not relieve the police of its responsibilities in other public places, Haaretz noted.
The incident occurred in what City University of New York scholar Dov Waxman described in an article in The Middle East Journal as an atmosphere of escalating tension between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. “Attitudes on both sides have hardened, mutual distrust has intensified, fear has increased, and political opinion has become more militant and uncompromising….Jews and Palestinians are currently on a collision course, with potentially severe consequences for their continued peaceful co-existence, as well as for stability and democracy in Israel,” Mr. Waxman wrote.
The incident further highlights the failure of the Israeli Football Association (IFA), the only soccer body in the Middle East and North Africa to have launched a campaign against racism and discrimination, to rein in the Beitar fans and curb the club’s submission to its supporter’s racist attitudes. With the worst disciplinary record in Israel’s Premier League, Beitar has faced since 2005 more than 20 hearings and has received various punishments, including point deductions, fines and matches behind closed doors because of its fans’ racist behavior.
Beitar’s matches often resemble a Middle Eastern battlefield. It’s mostly Sephardic fans of Middle Eastern and North African origin, revel in their status as the bad boys of Israeli soccer. Their dislike of Ashkenazi Jews of East European extraction rivals their disdain for Palestinians.
Supported by Israeli right wing leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Beitar traces its roots to a revanchist Zionist youth movement. Its founding players actively resisted the pre-state British mandate authorities.
Beitar is Israel’s only leading club never to have signed an Israeli Palestinian player because of fan pressure despite the fact that Palestinians are among the country’s top players. Maccabi striker Mohammed Ghadir recently put Beitar on the spot when he challenged the club to hire him despite its discriminatory hiring policies.
Beitar fans shocked Israelis several years ago when they refused to observe a moment of silence for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who initiated the first peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
Referring to the latest incident, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the law enforcement agency had not launched an earlier investigation into the shopping mall attack because no one involved in the incident had sought medical assistance or filed a complaint about the incident in which mostly young Beitar fans unfurled a Kach flag. Beitar fans often fly the flag during soccer matches.
"How can we arrest someone when there have been no complaints made? There have been no reports of injuries or that anyone was spoken to in [a racist] way. Normally, members of the public would have come forward within hours to make an official complaint. Until now, none has been made", Mr. Rosenfeld said.
Witnesses said the soccer fans flooded into the shopping center, hurled racial abuse at Palestinians workers and shoppers and chanted anti-Palestinian slogans.
Haaretz quoted Mohammed Yusuf, a cleaner in the mall, as describing the attack as “a mass lynching attempt."
An unidentified shop owner told the paper that the soccer fans “stood on chairs and tables (in the mall’s food court) and what have you. They made a terrible noise, screamed 'death to the Arabs,' waved their scarves and sang songs at the top of their voices."
A brawl erupted fans started verbally abusing and spitting at three Palestinian women, who were sitting in the food hall with their children, according to CCTV footage. Palestinian cleaners intervened in a bid to help the women, chasing fans with their broomsticks. After initially succeeding in chasing them away, the fans return to attack the cleaners.
"They caught some of them and beat the hell out of them. They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. I don't understand how none shattered into pieces. One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy, and then they had a go at his brother who works in a nearby pizza shop and came to his rescue," bakery owner Yair told Haaretz.
Jewish shop owners refused demands by the fans that they give them knives and sticks with which they could attack the Palestinians. By the same token, no one in the mall intervened to stop the attack. The mall’s security chief, whose men were outnumbered by the fans, called police who arrived only 40 minutes after the attack started. Police evacuated the mall but did not intervene further or arrest any of the culprits. Malha executive director Gideon Avrahami was the only senior official or executive to apologize to the workers.
In a statement, Beitar Jerusalem said that the club "firmly condemns violence and leaves it to the treatment of the authorities." Beitar went however on to say that “the incident at the mall has nothing to do with Beitar Jerusalem... Apparently the fistfight started because of an argument between a fan and a worker. This is not about racist violence."
Commentator Levy warned that the problem was one of Beitar’s attitude and mentality. “This was not a rare, one-off event, of course. The Beitar entourage strikes again. It starts with their racist and ultranationalist chants and songs, continues to hitting and will end in murders. One of the young rioters boasted the following day (to my informant's daughter) about what he and his friends had done the previous evening. Apparently anti-Arab violence is a source of cheer: Beitar finally won a game, you have to celebrate somehow. It's easy to imagine what would have happened had they lost,” he said.
An Israeli member of parliament called on the eve of the latest Beitar incident Israeli soccer fan for putting violent soccer fans under administrative detention, the legal holdover from British rule largely employed to detain Palestinians for reasons of security for indefinite periods of time without being charged.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Egyptian soccer riots set to spread from Port Said to Cairo
By James M. Dorsey
The battle for Egypt’s future was set to spill once again into the streets of Cairo... more
By James M. Dorsey
The battle for Egypt’s future was set to spill once again into the streets of Cairo following two days of battles between militant supporters of the embattled Al Masri SC soccer club of Port Said that sparked the closure of the city’s harbour and left one teenager dead and more than 100 people wounded.
The riots in Port Said coupled with plans for protests on Sunday by militant fans of crowned Cairo club AL Ahly SC in front of the headquarters of the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) and an Al Ahly board meeting scheduled for Monday were prompted by the EFA’s controversial meting out of penalties for last month’s lethal clash between supporters of the two teams that left 74 people dead.
Al Ahly spokesman Gamal Gabr denounced the EFA ruling as “an invitation for more violence. We are back to square one…Ahli fans will never accept such a weak verdict from a powerless association,” he said in an interview on soccer channel Modern Korba TV.
The EFA on Friday banned Al Masri for two seasons from playing in Egypt’s premier league and closed the city’s stadium for three years. The soccer body also ordered Al Ahly to play four matches behind closed doors and suspended the club’s Portuguese coach Manuel Jose as well as midfielder Hossam Ghaly for an equal number of games in a decision that in close coordination with Egypt’s military rulers failed to address the underlying causes of the soccer violence and satisfied no one.
The ruling conformed to an earlier comment by Egyptian prime minister Kamal El-Ganzouri who after a meeting with senior soccer and security officials called in violation of world soccer body FIFA’s ban on political interference in soccer on the EFA to ensure that its punitive measures would “neither be lenient nor excessive.” The government’s concern about the political fallout of the Port Said incident was already evident when it last month against the will of FIFA fired the board of the EFA that had been appointed under ousted president Hosni Mubarak. FIFA is expected to discuss the issue at an executive committee meeting in Zurich later this week.
Adding insult to injury, Mr. Ganzouri acknowledged that the EFA had awarded Al Masri “the minimum penalty,” adding that the club had the right to appeal the verdict.
The government’s approach as well as the EFA ruling reflect a refusal to address the deep-seated animosity between security forces and militant soccer fans stemming from years of almost weekly clashes in Egyptian stadiums as well as the growing frustration among youth groups and soccer fans who were at the core of last year’s popular revolt that they are being marginalized while the aims of their uprising are being shunted aside in favour of vested interests.
“The old (Mubarak) regime was very sceptic of everything organized. They tried to control the unions, they tried to control the student unions in the universities and they tried to control the political life. Suddenly they found in front of them a bunch of young people organizing themselves in football. That’s why we had so many problems.
They just weren’t happy with the fact that you have 20, 25 guys who have gathered 500 people in two hours. For them, now they are speaking about football, tomorrow they will be speaking about politics and funny enough, for us, we had no political intention at any moment. They made of us what they were afraid, repressing us when they started like fighting us, people started to hate them because we were fighting for our freedom, for what we believe we had the right to achieve and the right to establish,” Assad, one of the founders of the Ultras Ahlawy, the militant Al Ahly support group, told the BBC.
Supporters of Al Masri and Al Ahly alongside a growing number of soccer officials and ordinary Egyptians are convinced that last month’s lethal clash between the two rivals after a match in Port Said was provoked by the military and security forces in a bid to punish the ultras – well-organized, highly-politicized, violence-prone, street battle-hardened soccer fans groups modelled on similar organizations in Italy and Serbia – for their militant opposition to military rule since last year’s ousting of Mr. Mubarak. The belief is fuelled by circumstantial evidence.
The ultras, who last year played a key role in the mass anti-government protests that forced Mr. Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office, have since emerged in repeated vicious street battles with security forces as the fiercest opponents of the military who succeeded the toppled leader with a pledge to lead the country to democracy.
The preliminary results of a parliamentary investigation into the Port Said incident appeared to bear out some of the evidence that the violence had been planned by registering the involvement of unidentified thugs and lax security while also blaming the fans. Egypt’s attorney general recently charged 75 people, including nine security officials, in connection with the incident. Al Ahly fans noted that the security personnel appeared to be getting off lightly with charges of negligence while Al Masri supporters were largely accused of murder.
“When you come here…you get a real sense of how football is part of all of this… You realize how football and politics are totally connected… It’s clear that this was not a case of typical fan violence. There are camera reports that the gates are welded shut and one of the first things that you see with what’s going on on the field, police are doing nothing. When I ask opinions of different people, I do get opinions from people who say that the military in their own way in some moments are almost trying to say: fine, you want us out, well then this is what it’s going to be like without us…. When you start piecing all this together, as everybody knows now, this not just violence. This was much more complicated,” said Egypt’s American national coach Bob Bradley in a BBC interview.
Speaking in a separate BBC interview, a fan of Al Ahly which traces its history as an opposition force to its founding more than a century ago as a meeting point for opponents of British colonial rule, vividly described scenes during the clash in Port Said stadium that fuel the belief that the lethal violence was not spontaneous.
“After the final whistle the fans started to storm the grounds…We were so surprised that the gates were locked, so we find ourselves like say 800 people all stuck inside this tunnel, 60 square meters. We started to fall down on each other, there were like five levels of people all on each other…All you could see was half of a human. You could see just the upper part, you could see the head and the body is buried under other bodies. You could see the hand, just one hand of our friends, just trying to say help or something.
The cops didn’t do anything, they were just watching. The army were guarding this gate and they were just watching. They were just killing us… It wasn’t just about killing, it was about humiliating. When you see someone with two broken legs and stabbed in the face just like that and stabbed in his stomach, you’re not just killing, your humiliating before killing,” the fan identified as Bima said.
Supporters of Al Masri and Port Said residents feel that their team and city was set up and is being subjected to collective punishment for a battle that is not theirs. “We need to know who is provoking the rift between Port Said and Cairo,” demanded a protester in the Suez Canal city after its port was closed and ships were diverted further east.
In a statement on their Facebook page, Al Masri ultras known as the Green Eagles denied that they had participated in the slaughter of mostly Al Ahly fans. “Congratulations to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, they succeeded in driving a wedge between the two cities. They are now watching the play they wrote…Something suspicious is happening in the Suez Canal… We withdrew once we saw suspicious things happening (in the stadium),” the statement said.
Representatives of Port Said in parliament echoed the ultras’ sentiment in a joint statement with some blaming Al Ahly for provoking the incident. “We call on Egypt’s intellectuals and faithful media personnel to stand up against the tendentious campaign to drive a wedge between the residents of Port Said and Cairo and completely isolate Port Said. We fully respect Ahly’s board of directors and fans ... there will never be any hard feelings between Port Said and Ahly. The Port Said residents are leading calls for the punishment of the culprits. However, they fully reject any attempts to wipe out the name of Masry from Egyptian football. Accordingly, we will not accept any excessive sanctions that will be considered as a collective punishment for the city and the club,” the deputies said in their statement.
In separate remarks Port Said deputy Akram El-Shaer said Ahly fans had incited the violence with a banner that mocked Port Said, his colleague El-Badry Farghaly warned that he expose “the corruption of Ahly’s board of directors and their chairman, Hassan Hamdy”.
Mr. Hamdy attracted attention last year for an alleged conflict of interest in heading Al Ahly while at the same time occupying the posts of director of advertisement at Al Alhram, the most important state-owned print publication under Mr. Mubarak, and chair of the EFA’s sponsorship committee. Military police were last year to have seized documents that Mr. Hamdy and then Al Ahram editor-in-chief Osama Saraya had allegedly attempted to smuggle out of the editor's office. Prosecutors were investigating the documents to verify employees' suspicion that they contained evidence of corruption.
In a further blow to the city, Port Said’s port was shut down Saturday after stone-throwing protesters clashed with police near the Suez Canal Authority building and demonstrators forced the closure of factories by blocking roads leading into the city. A 13-year old was killed and at least 100 people wounded in the clashes.
While Al Masri supporters have taken to the streets to protest what they see as their club and city being scapegoated, Al Ahly is preparing to take the EFA, the security forces and the military to task for what it sees as a far too lenient treatment of the Suez Canal city’s club and the security forces.
Ultras Ahlawy warned in a statement that their patience with the government and the EFA meting out justice was running out and said they would start a sit-in in front of the EFA headquarters on Sunday. “If our silence led some people to think that we are weak … then the following words are directed to them. From now on, we will be out of our mind. You can call us thugs, you can call us crazy, but we will be crazy to regain our rights, either through legal avenues or with our bare hands. We are ready to die for our rights; we are ready to add to the toll of 74 deaths,” the group said.
It demanded a swift trial for the Port Said culprits, the relegation and suspension of sports activities of Al Masri for a period of three years, and resumption of the premier league once the rights of the victims of the clash had been secured.
Al Ahly’s board said it would meet on Monday in emergency session “to discuss the EFA’s decisions and take the appropriate measures which would preserve the rights of the club and their fans”. Club chairman Mahmoud Allam warned that “there will be some surprises on Monday. We will take a stance against those sanctions which satisfy nobody. We expected far tougher punishments after the suffering of our fans. The decisions which will be taken by the board of directors will show how much we care about our supporters.”
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Egypt’s powder keg: Meting out punishment for Port Said
By James M. Dorsey
The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) is struggling with how to penalize the Suez... more
By James M. Dorsey
The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) is struggling with how to penalize the Suez Canal town of Port Said’s soccer team Al Masri SC for a clash six weeks ago with supporters of crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC in which 74 fans were killed in the worst incident in Egyptian sporting history.
The EFA’s dilemma is not simply one of satisfying demands for justice by Ultras Ahlawy, the militant Ahly support group, which suffered the greatest loss of life without provoking die hard Al Masri supporters but also goes to the heart of what really happened in Port Said.
Egyptian prime minister Kamel El-Ganzouri cautioned that Al Masri's punishment “should neither be lenient nor excessive," according to Egyptian media.
The EFA's dilemma is compounded by the fact that it is being managed by caretakers after the board appointed by ousted President Hosni Mubarak was summarily dismissed by the government immediately after the Port Said clash. FIFA's executive committee is expected to discuss the Port Said situation at the end of this month.
The EFA’s options include ordering Al Masri to play many of its home games behind closed doors or in a different city to demoting them to a lower division. The club could also be banned from playing for one year.
The government's willingness to risk condemnation by world soccer body FIFA for politically interfering in soccer affairs with its dismissal of the EFA's board and Mr. El-Ganzouri's advice underlines the political sensitivity of the decision facing the Egyptian association.
The government fears that if not properly balanced, the EFA's decision could spark new confrontations with the street-battled hardened soccer fans that played a key role last year in ousting Mr. Mubarak and have since emerged as the ruling military's most militant opponents.
Both the government and parliament are investigating the incident for which 75 people, including nine security officials, were last week charged with murder or negligence. The EFA cancelled this season’s premier league shortly after the Port Said incident.
The ultras of Al Ahly and its Cairo arch rival Al Zamalek SC accuse the government and security forces of having at the very least enabled if not encouraged the clash in the Port Said stadium after a match between Al Masri SC and Al Ahly to punish the Cairo ultras for emerging as the most militant opponents to military rule.
Preliminary results of a parliamentary investigation of the Port Said incident blamed fans and lax security for the incident and suggested that unidentified thugs had been involved in the violence, fuelling reports that the violence had been planned rather than spontaneous. The circumstantial evidence that Al Masri fans may not have instigated the incident, including messages on twitter in advance of the game, the failure of the security forces to intervene when the clash got out of hand and unconfirmed reports that military vehicles escorted the thugs to the stadium complicates the penalizing of Al Masri.
Some ultras believe that the clash and the suspension of the league in soccer-crazy Egypt was designed to further isolate the ultras and youth groups that have lost popularity in recent months in a country that has become protest weary and yearns for a return to normalcy and economic growth. Anti-government protests and violent clashes with security forces stand in the way of focusing on the economy.
Potential relegation of Masri could prove to be a financial disaster for the club and impact the economy of a town that increasingly feels that is being singled out for collective punishment. Representatives of Port Said in Egypt's newly elected parliament have warned that they would not tolerate the city being made a scapegoat,
“We call on Egypt’s intellectuals and faithful media personnel to stand up against the tendentious campaign to drive a wedge between the residents of Port Said and Cairo and completely isolate Port Said...The Port Said residents are leading calls for the punishment of the culprits. However, they fully reject any attempts to wipe out the name of Masry from Egyptian football. Accordingly, we will not accept any excessive sanctions that will be considered as a collective punishment for the city and the club,” Port Said 's six parliamentary representatives said in a joint statement.
The hostility between Masri and Ahly remained however just below the surface. One of the deputies, Akram El-Shaer, suggested that the Cairo team had provoked the incident by raising a banner that mocked their Port Said opponent. Another signatory of the statement, El-Badry Farghaly, threatened to focus on “the corruption of Ahly’s board of directors and their chairman, Hassan Hamdy”.
Mr. Hamdy is believed to have been last year under investigation of corruption because of his apparent conflict of interest in being head of the lucrative advertisement department of state-owned Al Ahram newspaper, the Mubarak regime's most important print media outlet as well as chairman of Egypt’s most prominent soccer club and until recently chair of the EFA’s sponsorship committee at the same time.
Military police last year was reported to have seized three boxes of documents that Mr. Hamdy and then Al Ahram editor-in-chief Osama Saraya had allegedly attempted to smuggle out of the editor’s office when they were confronted by publishing house employees who suspected that the boxes contained documents that would prove the two men’s involvement in corruption.
The lethal clash between the Al Masri and Al Ahli fans has deepened animosity between the two clubs. Masri fans fuelled the flames by waving flags during demonstrations since the incident on which was inscribed: "They imprisoned my family and brothers for the sake of Ahly," according to Al Ahram.
Leila Zaki Chakravart, a London School of Economics scholar who spent 18 months in Port Said for research recalled in an article in Open Democracy “how the coastal Mediterranean city’s self-styled laissez faire lifestyle of almost sleepy monotony abruptly changed gear on the day each year on which the al-Masri/al-Ahly fixture was scheduled. Tension rose rapidly before the event, and a self-imposed curfew descended ensuring that only the city’s male population patronised its streets and public spaces.
All cities and towns in Egypt are, to some extent, football-mad: but Port Said is a city which takes its football fervour to the extreme. Boys learn to dribble from the time they can walk, and street football games are played out as passionately as the city’s sole professional football club is supported. Even the club’s choice of name provides telling evidence of how the city’s distinctive regional brand of martial patriotism, forged during the (!956) Suez invasion and later wars with Israel, is concretely rooted in and expressed through the tribal loyalties which football brings out. Most sporting clubs name themselves after the city (or district) in which they are based: but rather than follow convention and call itself simply ‘the Port Said Sporting Club’, the chosen title is instead Nadi al-Masri (‘the Egyptian Sporting Club’ – a deliberate mirroring of al-Ahly’s similarly unconventional choice of name, which translates as ‘the National Sporting Club’),” Ms. Chakravart wrote.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Work notes on the Tavola Eugubine, Script Q (IIB), Script Q1-Q273, update 4.25.12
by Mel Copeland
The Tavola Eugubine is a series of bronze tablets found near the city of Gubbio. There are seven tablets, some of which are written on both sides. The tablets are said to be written in the Umbrian language and in Latin. The texts of the group tend to follow a common theme, that of an oration. This text is a half-page entry apparently on the back of a bronze plate (similar to that seen in the Tavola Cortonensis).
It is most interesting, since the closing remarks of the text appear to state that their ancestor Atijerius came from Ionia or Penes (Peonia?). The Ionian connection would corroborate Herodotus who recorded that the Etruscan tradition said their ancestor, Tyrsenus, son of the Lydian king Atys, came from Lydia. The archeological context of the tables (this document refers to itself as a 'table') is of interest, whether the seven bronze tablets were found in situ as one collection. If so they may apply as a record kept by a particular knight of the Etruscans who, in this case, Table IIB claims that he 'created' the town or castle which he addresses. Both KASTRV (castrum-i) and VPETV (L. oppidum-i) are used in the text.
This is an update of our work on the Tavola Eugubine, (IIB) - http://www.maravot.com/Translation_EugubineQ.html. Changes produced on this page will be added to our Etruscan GlossaryA.pdf. All of the words in the glossary follow a grammar similar to Latin. One can easily discover that the several hundred texts on Etruscan Phrases all share a common language and grammar. This controverts the prevailing theory that the Etruscan language is not an Indo-European language. It also warrants further examination of the prevailing conclusion that the Tavola Eugubine is written in the Umbrian language.
Etruscan GlossaryA.xls/pdf. is an index to about 2,300 Etruscan words that are similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. Declension patterns follow those in Latin. The 2,500 words = the repeated words in 6,000 words of the major extant texts. The texts have been frozen in time, covering ~700-400 B.C., representing a lens to understanding the early formation of Indo-European languages, particularly the early Italic-Latin-Celtic languages, such as Italian, French & Romanian / Dacian. (By 45 BC. the language was a dead language - no one understood or could write Etruscan)
This GlossaryA works together with Indo-European Table 1 which refutes theories by the Pallottino school of thought that the Etruscan language is not Indo-European and an isolate, unlike any other language. It is very close to Latin and, curiously, Romanian, Italian and French. The Latin suffix, "us" shifts to "o" as in Italian (Titus vs Tito); first person conjugation patterns are similar to French and Romanian. This GlossaryA provides a quick look at the grammatical structure of the Etruscan language, how closely it coincides with Latin. A more detailed Declension Table can be seen on the Etruscan Phrases website. These PDF documents facilitate independent confirmation of the words in GlossaryA.xls , the Grammar and Declension Table. All words can be examined from actual images of texts on the Etruscan Phrases website. Over 150 texts, with about 6,000 words can be examined at Etruscan Phrases.
The Etruscans surfaced in Italy about 1,000 B.C., reputed to have arrived from Lydia / Phrygia. The Phrygians originated near Macedonia in Thrace, according to Herodotus. One may therefore inquire whether the ancient Thracians (Dacians, Gettae, modern Romanians), spoke a language common to the Phrygians, at the time of the Trojan War and after (~1180 B.C.). The Thracians, Phrygians and Lydians (also dead languages) were allies of the Trojans, according to the Iliad. Etruscan Phrases finds a common vocabulary among Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Etruscan and Phrygian. While French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are considered Romance languages, showing a similar Latin heritage, Etruscan is not, of course, a Romance language, as it preceded Latin, at least in the written form (giving Rome its alphabet).
Resolution of the Etruscan Mystery may be likened to Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B and Jean-François Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone - written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek. The decipherment of Etruscan is a bit more challenging; since we have no multilingual Rosetta stone, but we do have enough vocabulary and grammar to establish that Etruscan is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. (Certainly far more vocabulary and a more extensive grammar are provided in Etruscan Phrases than that used by Ventris to claim translation of Linear B as an old form of Greek.)
We look forward to the time when a peer review of these Work Notes will warrant corrections to the prevailing record, showing that the Etruscan language was similar to Latin and decry the theory that the "Etruscan language is unlike any other and not an Indo-European language." The theory of a non-Indo-European Etruscan language is absolutely false.
There is a far richer record to be written of an Indo-European branch, dead as of ~400 B.C., that can shed light on the movements of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age Italic peoples, perhaps out of southeastern Europe to Anatolia and then to Italy by sea. Herodotus, who recorded the Etruscan tradition, that they came from Lydia as a result of a long drought after the Trojan War, may be right. We mention this because there is more to be gained in sorting out the grammar at Etruscan Phrases - and possible confirmation of Herodotus - than can ever be hoped for in the bogus theory that "the Etruscan language is unlike any other language known to man." Wikipedia et al. should be corrected.
Work notes on the Tavola Eugubine, Script Q278-Q453
by Mel Copeland
The Tavola Eugubine is a series of bronze tablets found near the city of Gubbio. There are seven tablets, some of which are written on both sides. The tablets are said to be written in the Umbrian language and in Latin. The texts of the group tend to follow a common theme, that of an oration. This text is of a funeral oration delivered by a knight who calls himself Soverus, of Fescennia. Greek Hera, as presiding over childbirth and being a protector goddess. As in the case of the Pyrgi Gold Tablets, a goddess named Aph appears to play a significant role. Aph may be another aspect of the goddess Aphrodite. The Etruscan name of Aphrodite is Turan (TVRAN). It may be that both Aph and Turan served the Venus role, of love and childbirth, just as we can see the virgin huntress role of Artemis shared with a goddess named Mean (MEAN- See the Divine Mirror, Script DM). Edward Tripp (The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology) says that the Greeks have always known that Aphrodite was an Asiatic goddess, and that there is little doubt that Aphrodite, like Artemis, was originally a mother-goddess, of a type almost universally worshiped in the Near East and perhaps best known under the name of Ishtar or Astarte. Astarte is also known as a warlike goddess and is mentioned in the Assyrian Chronicles as leading the armies that continuously sacked the cities of eastern Anatolia. Aphrodite and the Greek god of War, Ares, produced Deimus and Phobus (Fear and Panic) who were Ares' constant companions in battle.
This is an update of our work on the Tavola Eugubine, (III) - http://www.maravot.com/Translation_EugubineQ.html. Changes produced on this page will be added to our Etruscan GlossaryA.pdf. All of the words in the glossary follow a grammar similar to Latin. One can easily discover that the several hundred texts on Etruscan Phrases all share a common language and grammar. This controverts the prevailing theory that the Etruscan language is not an Indo-European language. It also warrants further examination of the prevailing conclusion that the Tavola Eugubine is written in the Umbrian language.
Etruscan GlossaryA.xls /pdf. is an index to about 2,300 Etruscan words that are similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. Declension patterns follow those in Latin. The 2,500 words = the repeated words in 6,000 words of the major extant texts. The texts have been frozen in time, covering ~700-400 B.C., representing a lens to understanding the early formation of Indo-European languages, particularly the early Italic-Latin-Celtic languages, such as Italian, French & Romanian / Dacian. (By 45 BC. the language was a dead language - no one understood or could write Etruscan)
This GlossaryA works together with Indo-European Table 1 which refutes theories by the Pallottino school of thought that the Etruscan language is not Indo-European and an isolate, unlike any other language. It is very close to Latin and, curiously, Romanian, Italian and French. The Latin suffix, "us" shifts to "o" as in Italian (Titus vs Tito); first person conjugation patterns are similar to French and Romanian. This GlossaryA provides a quick look at the grammatical structure of the Etruscan language, how closely it coincides with Latin. A more detailed Declension Table can be seen on the Etruscan Phrases website. These PDF documents facilitate independent confirmation of the words in GlossaryA.xls , the Grammar and Declension Table. All words can be examined from actual images of texts on the Etruscan Phrases website. Over 150 texts, with about 6,000 words can be examined at Etruscan Phrases.
The Etruscans surfaced in Italy about 1,000 B.C., reputed to have arrived from Lydia / Phrygia. The Phrygians originated near Macedonia in Thrace, according to Herodotus. One may therefore inquire whether the ancient Thracians (Dacians, Gettae, modern Romanians), spoke a language common to the Phrygians, at the time of the Trojan War and after (~1180 B.C.). The Thracians, Phrygians and Lydians (also dead languages) were allies of the Trojans, according to the Iliad. Etruscan Phrases finds a common vocabulary among Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Etruscan and Phrygian. While French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are considered Romance languages, showing a similar Latin heritage, Etruscan is not, of course, a Romance language, as it preceded Latin, at least in the written form (giving Rome its alphabet).
Resolution of the Etruscan Mystery may be likened to Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B and Jean-François Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone - written in Egyptian hieroglypics, Demotic and Greek. The decipherment of Etruscan is a bit more challenging, since we have no multilingual Rosetta Stone, but we do have enough vocabulary and grammar to establish that Etruscan is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. (Certainly far more vocabulary and a more extensive grammar is provided in Etruscan Phrases than that used by Ventris to claim translation of Linear B as an old form of Greek.)
We look forward to the time when a peer review of these Work Notes will warrant corrections to the prevailing record, showing that the Etruscan language was similar to Latin and decry the theory that the "Etruscan language is unlike any other and not an Indo-European language;" that the theory is absolutely false.
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Seen by: and 11 more"Review of Chloé Raggazoli, Éloges de la ville en Égypte ancienne: Histoire et littérature (Les institutions dans l’Égypte ancienne, 4). Pp. 267, figs. (in text) 42. Paris, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008. ISBN 978 2 84050 604 1"
Published in "Journal of Egyptian Archaeology" 97 (2011), 254-257.
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